Jan 04, 2007 One Word Wonder Puzzle

Woo Hoo! My puzzle was chosen!!!!!

You have already solved this puzzle.
It took you 4 minutes and 3 seconds.
You are the 2nd fastest Tanga member to solve this puzzle.
You were the 2nd Tanga member to solve this puzzle.

Yes it really helps to sudoku it.

Wow i really dont feel like doing a sudoku....so i wont :)

It took you 5 minutes and 14 seconds.
You are the 4th fastest Tanga member to solve this puzzle.
You were the 4th Tanga member to solve this puzzle.

I like the background; it's a very clever, subtle hint.

I got it after doing only a few numbers, but I can't leave a Sudoku half done

Hmm. any way besides Suddoku?

Very nice puzzle xpsdude.

yep. sure is.

you just have to count slowly.

You have already solved this puzzle.
It took you 1 minute and 12 seconds.
You are the 4th fastest Tanga member to solve this puzzle.
You were the 16th Tanga member to solve this puzzle.

Glad you guys and gals like it.

If I were doing this offline, I would have been less enthusiastic. As it stands, it's certainly an interesting puzzle.

Yes it helps to suduko. And yes I finished the sududo before going on. It was as easy as pie from there.

My hat is off to anyone who can solve this Sudoku in 1 minute and 12 seconds!!!!

I have got the sudoku, but what to do with the numbers and pi?

[15] cokeman4 : All the numbers are under 26, aren't they?

@victory

yes but why is that significant?

You have already solved this puzzle.
It took you 7 minutes and 11 seconds.
You are the 21st fastest Tanga member to solve this puzzle.
You were the 66th Tanga member to solve this puzzle.

I liked this puzzle, simple and straightforward.

lol thanks victory, I tried that but I made a mistake. duh

Would have had it without help! Nice puzzle

Now, how to do this without doing a Sudoku puzzle, since I hate Sudoku...

I can't be any less ambiguous without giving away the puzzle, sorry.

thanks victory...even the thick headed get the salt eventually.LOL

Good puzzle, XPS!

(And nobody with an Internet connection has to actually solve a Sudoku who doesn't want to. I'll leave it at that.) :)

didn't get the 26 reference without the sodium chloride.
Don't know what would have lead me to that conclusion either.

What was supposed to lead me to that conclusion?

there are very few words that have the requisite "pattern" to them that gobblegobble hell, how many can you think of gobblegobble as it is? think sing-songy words.

They just gave me blog edit ability. That's what the gobblegobble is. This way the numbers won't get messed up. Aaron

You have already solved this puzzle.
It took you 26 minutes and 42 seconds.
You are the 80th fastest Tanga member to solve this puzzle.
You were the 83rd Tanga member to solve this puzzle.

actually quite a few. After watching an old episode of Dr Who (Death to the Daleks, I believe) I was motivated to write puzzles with pi somewhere as a clue and/or answer. I generated several dozen related puzzles that night for my D&D campaign.

see, my first frustration was that there aren't 9 letters in Sudoku.

[23] Yes there are obviously online Sudoku solvers. (And yes that's how I solved this thing.) I was looking for an alternative way to solve the puzzle. No such luck I guess.

Arrrgh.... Thanks bagherra for pointing out what a knuckle head I am - I kept adding an "e" to the end of it. With your insight I got it right away - Thanks!!!I even had most of the sudoko solved and still didn't see it until your post :)

You have already solved this puzzle.
It took you 27 minutes and 9 seconds.
You are the 88th fastest Tanga member to solve this puzzle.
You were the 96th Tanga member to solve this puzzle.

I am not good at doing Sudoku puzzles quickly.

But this was a nice fairly straightforward puzzle.

[29], I absolutely consider that an alternative way. You can either work through the Sudoku (and some people might enjoy that), or you can find an end-around that lets you solve the overall puzzle faster, which is kinda the point, right?

Very fun puzzle. I loved the fact it could also be done with some light detective work.

I didn't know there were online sudoku solvers!!! Aaargh, I could have saved myself 40 minutes... it's been over 2 years since I last did a sudoku.

I actually figured the answer early on, but like many I had to finish the sudoku out of habit.

Nice puzzle xpsdude!

Oooh, we can edit our comments now.

Thanks, nrkii.

I knew many would use online solvers, but also I figured at least some would enjoy the process of solving the puzzle manually.

Man, that was cool. I liked that a lot. It took me too long, thanks to my stubborn insistence in solving the dad-gum sudoku without help, but it was a great puzzle.

Bless those who mentioned the online solvers. I would not be a very happy camper right now without them.

I am however happy to see one of my puzzles is going into the lineup. Weee. Seeing my name on the list inspired me to craft and submit another one just now.

Not bad...Not bad at all. I like Sudoku, but was pretty surprised to see it here. Proof that a puzzle doesn't always have to be crazy abstract to be fun.

It took you 15 minutes and 56 seconds.
You are the 68th fastest Tanga member to solve this puzzle.
You were the 133rd Tanga member to solve this puzzle.

Probably could have cranked it out faster if I wasn't so sleepy.

tick tock tick tock - sudoku on a timer - tick tock tick tock
rats!!! 6X in the bottom line reprint tick tock....
cook dinner - rats... telephone call - rats.... rats rats

It took you 55 minutes and 24 seconds.
You are the 140th fastest Tanga member to solve this puzzle.
You were the 126th Tanga member to solve this puzzle.

good puzzle

Much easier than a normal sudoku, but more annoying since it wasn't a nifty web based sudoku that lets me type in the answers.

Screw salt and online solvers, I just needed to find a pencil.

my puzzle goes up on Sunday...

This was an excellent puzzle. Congrats, Dude!

I love sudoku! Thanks for the fun puzzle (even thought it took me way to long since I couldn't count tonight).

jswheeler - did the BOC come, and what was in it?

interesting.

Cute, nice puzzle. Writing out the sudoku ate up some time, though. :)

does this require anagramming? Because the letters I come up with don't make sense in their current order.

never mind... I was leaving out the last step. Yikes, that took me a long time.

That was a very nice idea for a puzzle...kudos.

I don't know how the Yugoslavian flag is supposed to be a hint. =P

I didn't know the Yugoslavian flag had a sudoku grid on it :-)

Another excellent puzzle. Thanks xpsdude!

When is puzzle master Uethym going to stump us all? Maybe Jan 31st?

I can't beleive all these puzzle fanatics complaining about solving a puzzle. I may be biased because I like SUDOKU but just have fun solving it.

I like the puzzle. I only got the significance of the background after I solved it. It needs some help in the upper left corner Thanks xps

xpsdude, post [38]: "I knew many would use online solvers, but also I figured at least some would enjoy the process of solving the puzzle manually."

Sure, and there's nothing wrong with that either. To me, the objective is to solve the overall puzzle, and if there is a tool that can make solving an intermediate part easier, I have no problem using it. It's really no different than Googling up the airport codes from last night's, or using IMDB to solve the Cuba Gooding Jr. one, in my eyes.

But that's another reason why it's a good puzzle, it can be solved in different ways, whichever are satisfying to the individual solver.

I learned this watching old "follow the bouncing ball" cartoons in the late 70s. Still haven't forgotten how it goes.

This is my kind of puzzle :) though I am embarrassed to say I messed up the first time and had to erase and start over (took 25min total).

This is the first puzzle I've solved without salt. Nice puzzle

You have already solved this puzzle.
It took you 23 minutes and 57 seconds.
You are the 154th fastest Tanga member to solve this puzzle.
You were the 255th Tanga member to solve this puzzle.

Ok, I'll bite. How *does* the background relate to the puzzle? As far as I can tell, it's irrelevant. A photo of Summer Glau from Firefly, on the other hand...

Nice puzzle. Someone asked if there was a way to solve it without solving the sodaku, and yes, there is, because I did. And no, I didn't use a 'solver' either. I never solved a single one of the numbers, though I could back-track to get a few of them if I wanted to.

Oh wow, I just noticed, one of my puzzles is tomorrow!

You *guessed* the answer, or you have some twisted backdoor way of getting the same answer with only 18% of the content?

I suppose if you wanted to solve it without Sudokuing it, you could. It'd just require an extensive knowledge and application of words that exist. When you do the Sudoku though, it's cheesecake.

Wow; that was one of my favorite puzzles so far; nice and straigtforward, took just the right amount of time. Good Job xpsdude!

I absolutely hate sudoku so I'm glad for the online solver.

Nice use of sudoku to make a new puzzle. Unfortunately for me, I made a mistake and had to redo the numbers before I could solve!

It took you 25 minutes and 4 seconds.
You were the 61st Tanga member to solve this puzzle.

[63]psarrett

The background is only a subtle nod that you have the right word. It is a reference to a controversial aspect of the word that many try to get changed; however, that aspect was left off.

Hence, the comment about things in the upper left corner [58]

Finally one I can solve without reading the blog. I solved it at work during a couple of coffee breaks so it took me longer that necessary.

[65]: No need to fill in any of the unknown numbers. The number of blanks set the possibilities to 9 or 13, and a quick glance along rows and columns reduced it to 3 or 4 in every case. Then by coincidence, the right-most possibility was the right one 5 out of 7 times, so the answer just leapt out. Oh, that and starting with 36%, not 18%.

Actually, I guessed it without doing any sudoku OR filling in the numbers (and without salt). The answer couldn't be arithmetic (in the sense of adding all the numbers); after all, what word would mean some sum that includes pi? So the letters "pi" had to be at the end. Look at the number of letters to be gotten from the puzzle, and ask what word ends in "pi" and is that long. Actually, even just asking what word ends in "pi" and is longish was enough for me to guess it. There's not many.

Of course, I rather like sudoku, but if I can get it by straight deduction instead, why not?

well, having never done a Sudoku - I got it finally with zero salt...

thekeck and leadfoot:

The country of Yugoslavia doesn't exist anymore.. They have abolished that name.. The country has been split into Serbia and Montenegro. The old flag is no longer used.

Flag of Serbia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Flag_of_Serbia_%28state%29.svg

Flag of Montenegro:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Flag_of_Montenegro.svg

edit* For some reason the link stops at the colon. You'll have to copy the link I suppose.

Great puzzle.

Had to try to sudoku quickly for good time.

Solved it with only 3 of the 9 blanks filled in. (If you know the overall path of the puzzle, it helps you shortcut some of the sudoku clues.)

Mmmm. The kind of puzzle I love. Thanks xpsdude!

took me FOREVER to do this, but I have never done a Sudoku before. That was fun.

I got off on the wrong foot on the Sudoku puzzle, thinking that I had to 'add' the digits to fill the blanks. I finally got it straight after sleeping on it:

It took you 12 hours, 24 minutes and 16 seconds.
You are the 406th fastest Tanga member to solve this puzzle.
You were the 406th Tanga member to solve this puzzle.

Woohoo! Last place! 406 out of 406!!! (at least I solved it)
Tim

the bg is just about enough to solve the puzzle on its own, and the greek letter helps.... unfortunately for me, i went and did the sudoku first, because, well, it's sudoku :)

This has been my favorite puzzle yet. Thanks!

Well, crud. If I could count correctly, I'd have solved it long ago!

that was fun =)

Talk about *dense* -- I was decoding using single digits only... And thank goodness for online solvers; I *hate* Sudoku.

Nice puzzle, though. :)